MEDFORD, Ore. – A witness in the trial of a southern Oregon woman charged with killing two handymen and feeding their corpses to her pigs has testified the woman signed a birthday card in jail with this phrase: "from the sweetest murderer in Jackson County."
Jordan "Janae" Farris testified Monday that Susan Monica also confided that she shot one of the victims, 56-year-old Robert Haney, with a shotgun and fed him to her pigs.
"I got chills from the birthday card," said the 23-year-old inmate, who is serving time for violating probation from a burglary conviction and met Monica in the Jackson County Jail.
Farris said the April 9 birthday greeting came a few days after Monica told her about the killing. She told her story to jailers last week and appeared as an 11th-hour witness, with the prosecution preparing to finish its case Tuesday, the Medford Mail Tribune (http://bit.ly/1OCtqe4) reported.
In other testimony, a State Police forensic anthropologist, Veronica Vance, testified that Haney's legs had been chopped off with an ax, and the thigh bones showed signs of being gnawed by an animal.
Monica is charged with murder and abusing the corpses of 59-year-old Stephen Delicino in 2012 and Haney in 2013.
Monica told investigators she shot Delicino in self-defense and said he was eaten by her pigs before she buried his remains on her 20-acre farm.
She told investigators Haney disappeared in the summer of 2013. She said she came on him a month later as pigs were disemboweling him, and she shot him to ease his suffering. She later questioned whether he was alive when she shot him.
Defense attorney Garren Pedemonte has argued there's no concrete evidence to rebut Monica's claims that she shot Delicino in self-defense or to show that Haney was actually alive when Monica shot him. His remains were found in plastic bags in her barn.
Vance said she couldn't determine whether the ax blows came before or after Haney died. She said Delicino suffered three to four gunshot wounds to the head, but there was no evidence one way or another about the self-defense claim.
___
Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
